David Ellard and Software Patents

Regularly argues that knowledge economy needs a market where new ideas can be traded like material goods.

David Ellard has been an official of the European Commission since 1995 and has worked in the fields of information technology, competition and now industrial property. His responsibilities currently include the proposed directive on patentability of software inventions, international exhaustion of trademarks, the proposed directive on enforcement of IP rights and questions related to economic and

competition aspects of industrial property, including patentlitigation *insurance*. Previous to his current position in the Internal Market DG of the Commission, he worked in anti-trust policy in the information technology sector and in the EC's information technology research programme, Esprit. Prior to the European Commission, he worked in the information and communications technology sector as a sales engineer for voice and data networking products.